Bay Briefing: The fight to reclaim Paradise

A composite image before and after the Camp Fire: LEFT: The properties at Melene Court at Country Oak Drive on Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Paradise, Calif. The area was destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire. RIGHT: The homes at Melene Court at Country Oak Drive, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2018, in Paradise, Calif. As of this morning, the Camp Fire has burned 140,000 acres. The wildfire is 40% contained. 56 people have died.

Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

Good morning, Bay Area. It’s Friday, May 3, and Paradise is coming to terms with rebuilding, tourists could pay more at San Francisco attractions, and a Berkeley housing project is hitting several snags. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

Reclaiming Paradise

Before the Camp Fire wiped out their town, David and Chenoa Rivera had found a niche there. The couple bought rundown properties in the Sierra foothills and turned them into charming mountain getaways — a pursuit that even got them their own reality TV show.

But it’s more than raising new homes. A huge cleanup of ash means many of the burned lots won’t be ready for new construction until next year, the local water agency doesn’t expect to deliver clean water to much of the town for two years, and almost every school is gone.

The community also faces an existential dilemma: Should it rebuild at all in an area so prone to fire? Kurtis Alexander reports.

Surge pricing for parks

Newlyweds Maurice and Sheri Passwater, visiting the Japanese Tea Garden from Des Moines, would have to pay more under a plan the city is considering.

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San Francisco park officials are considering adjusting admission fees at a handful of tourist attractions based on how many patrons are queuing up at any given time — up to 50% higher during busy periods, and 25% lower at slower times. The fees charged for visiting seniors and youths would remain the same.

A push to build rental housing for faculty at UC Berkeley has gotten messy. The university is seeking to replace a huge parking structure with much-needed faculty housing, some parking and classroom space. The biggest opponents? UC Berkeley professors, who voted overwhelmingly to kill the plan.

Meanwhile, the city of Berkeley voted to sue the campus over the project. And in an odd twist, it’s not because the city opposes the project. It doesn’t.

It’s a trove of historical photos of San Francisco — that’s surprisingly not in The Chronicle’s archive.

The San Francisco Assessor-Recorder’s Office has released 94,000 historic property photographs that cover both commercial and residential properties from the late 1940s to the early 2000s. A newly established database at the San Francisco History Center at the Main Library is available to those who want to see what their house — or another San Francisco address — looked like. Available images can then be requested for viewing.

“These photos don’t deserve to be in a box,” said Assessor Carmen Chu.

$$$ for meds

San Francisco’s prescription drug prices are much higher than the national average.

What’s driving those prices? There’s no definite answer, but there appears to be some correlation between a city’s overall cost of living and the cost of drugs there.

Researchers also theorize that cities such as San Francisco that don’t have as many big box retailers like Walmart, which often offer cheaper generic drugs, may see higher prices.

Around the bay

• Start the presses: A San Joaquin Valley superintendent who threatened to fire a high school journalism adviser for refusing to let her preview a story about a student in the porn industry has reluctantly backed off.

We introduced the car break-in tracker early this year to chart auto burglary reports each month, starting in January 2018, and to show how the rates have changed over time. Using the map, you can track — in close to real time — the number and locations of car break-ins across the city.

What have we found? Reports of car break-ins are declining in San Francisco, but they remain stubbornly common. While reported break-ins are down from 1,828 in April 2018 to 1,427 in April 2019, that’s still about 47 reports per day.

Taylor Kate Brown joined The San Francisco Chronicle in November 2018 as Newsletter Editor. She writes the morning Bay Briefing email and manages The Chronicle’s collection of newsletters.

She previously worked for BBC News for the website’s North American edition in Washington, DC, first as a staff writer and then as features producer and editor. Before the BBC she worked as a Local Editor for Patch in Maryland and earned a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She got her start in journalism at the Connecticut Post.